Is that a viable antitrust argument? If either the DOJ or FTC does launch an inquiry — and it’s not at all clear that they will — does Apple have anything to worry about? That depends on the answers to two questions, Harry First, the Charles L. Denison Professor of Law at New York University School of Law, told me.

“The first question that needs to be answered is ‘does Apple have monopoly power in this market,’” First explained. “Is the iPhone platform really that dominant? The second is whether these new restrictions of Apple’s so hurt competing platforms that they could be considered maintenance of monopoly power. If Apple’s new SDK agreement effectively forces developers to write only for the iPhone platform, can that be proven to adversely affect inter-platform competition?”

Given thriving competition in the smartphone market and the number of cross-platform apps already available, the answers to both those questions would seem to be no. Add to this, Apple’s pro-competitive justifications for its behavior as laid out by CEO Steve Jobs last week (“a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer [and] ultimately results in sub-standard apps.”), and there doesn’t appear to be much here — if anything.

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